for so long. She was starving. She had almost given up hope when she was someone quivering in the back seat of a car.
‘Yes. Meat,”
Without thinking, she fumbled with the handle. The door was locked.
‘Meat,’
She slammed a loose fist through the window. The person inside shrieked. Steph latched onto them with both hands, dragging them out and onto the pavement. They caught briefly on the window frame but quickly pulled free. She didn’t care if it was a man, woman, or child. She just wanted to eat.
When they had stopped kicking and screaming, and when she had had her fill, she staggered to her feet and walked on. She didn’t know what she was looking for, she just knew she had to keep moving. It was out there.
Soon she was hungry again. She searched more cars. The people she found were already dead. They wouldn’t taste right.
‘So hungry,’
She tripped, landing face first on the asphalt. When she looked back to see what she had tripped over, she almost did a double take.
“Link,” This sounded more like a word than anything she’d tried to say since she came- to.
“Steph,” He said. It sounded like a groan, but was clear enough to understand.
It was him. It was really him.
“I thought you were dead,” She said, touching his face.
“I thought you were too. I woke up and I couldn’t find you.” He pulled her into a hug over the half eaten body. “Eat,” He said when he caught her staring down at it.
‘So, so hungry,’
A part of her wondered why she was eating human flesh, but most of her was too hungry to care. Lincoln was alive, and they were back together. That’s what really mattered.
As they devoured what was left in front of them, Steph couldn’t help sneaking glances at Link. He was really there. He was alive!
“We should walk up there,” He said, pointing up a small side road when they had finished.
“Why?” She asked.
“It’s right,” He said.
Steph shrugged and followed. His logic was as good as hers.
“You and me, Steph.Just you and me.” He said, throwing an arm around her.
“You’re so romantic. Candlelight, a bear skin rug, ‘oh darling, could you pass the legs?’” She laughed.
He kissed her. It was the first time they had kissed and not felt something, anything, rise up. To heat, no passion, no little sparks. They just felt . . . cold.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was morning when they reached a cabin. Steph hung back, chasing after a squirrel while Link ate his in full view of the windows. There might be meat in that cabin, but they couldn’t wait that long. They were hungry.
Link finished his food and walked up to a back window.
“Is anyone in there?” He asked in his groaning voice. He tapped the glass.
“Maybe they can’t understand you,” Steph said quietly.
He acknowledged her comment, and moved on to another side of the cabin, his hand trailing along the wood.
“Hello?” He called.
Steph followed him from the trees. If they were like those people in the car, she didn’t want to get close.
When he got to the front, someone started shouting. Then she heard a blast as Link was propelled backward. He landed hard. Steph nearly screamed. She tried to run to him, but her feet wouldn’t move fast enough. Her legs were tangled in bushes, trapping her out of sight.
She watched in horror as he rolled over, a teenage girl standing over him in the now open doorway. He asked her to put it down, to stop, but she yelled over him. He grabbed her leg and pulled, wanting to take the gun away. The girl kicked him in the face. Steph’s stomach rolled.
The girl latched onto the gun she had dropped, and shot Link in the face. He didn’t move.
Steph worked as hard as she could to free herself from the plant, kicking and pulling. It wasn’t until the girl had left with her friends that she had stumbled out from the trees, almost running to Link’s side.
He was gone.
Steph roared a string of swears, her body shaking in dry tears.
She couldn’t look at his face. It wasn’t there to look at.
She had lost the love of her life for a second time in twenty-four hours.
That girl was going to pay. Steph would rip her apart and eat every last bit of her if it was the last thing she did.
She had heard them call her ‘Jo’, which was a strange name for a girl, but it didn’t matter. She was going to destroy her. She just had to follow them. They would stop eventually.
Steph stumbled after them back to the main road. They were driving slowly, making their way through the cars. She couldn’t move fast enough. The truck she could smell them in was vanishing down the road.
She had to keep following. She was so hungry. She couldn’t let that girl get away with killing Link.
A loud bang echoed in her ears and she fell forward, hitting the ground. Looking behind her, she saw a shaking woman holding a gun in a trembling hand.
Maybe if she had a bite, she’d be able to move faster.
The woman crept closer, her whole body shaking like a leaf. Steph tried to sit up, and the woman aimed the gun at her head. Everything went black.
Some part of her knew she was finally, totally, dead. She couldn’t see, and she couldn’t hear, but she could feel Link next to her, his hand in hers.
They may have been dead and gone from this earth, from the life they knew, but they were together again.
Thank you for reading!
If you enjoyed reading this short story, please consider leaving a review and/or reading these other works:
Tonight The World Dies: A horror novel about four friends in the zombie apocalypse.
Watch The World Burn: Prequel to Tonight The World Dies, and includes the scene that inspired this short story
The Vomica: A new kind of zombie horror/fantasy involving magic, witches, werewolves, and zombies.
Novel Hearts: Released by Write More Publications, featuring this story, and other stories from several great authors.
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